Research-Based Strategies for Teaching

The Takeaway: This chapter critiques the stereotype of the AWOL black father, or common refrain “where have all the black men gone?” because this type of stereotype or common refrain does not acknowledge a major cause, the mass incarceration of black men. Argues that mass incarceration of black men has been normalized through an entire system that allows it to occur and compares and contrasts mass incarceration to the Jim Crow era.

The Birdcage of Racism: The U.S. criminal justice system as a tool of race control.

• The US system of mass incarceration uses a wide variety of laws, institutions, and practices, ranging from racial profiling to biased sentencing policies, political disenfranchisment, and legalized employment discrimination, to trap African Americans in a virtual and literal cage. Each of these is a bar of a birdcage, which act together to hold in the bird.
• Our current system can be understood as a birdcage with a locked door. It is a set of institutional arrangements that locks a racially distinct group into a subordinate political, social, and economic position. It is a system in which people are not simply disadvantaged, but rather are subject to the system itself, which is structured to lock them into subordinate positions.

The Birdcage Must Be Viewed as a Whole 

• The War on Drugs is the vehicle through which extraordinary numbers of Black men are forced into the cage. Entrapment occurs at three distinct phases.  

1. The roundup: Large numbers of people are swept into the criminal justice system by police who conduct drug operations in poor communities of color. Police are rewarded for these pursuits and allow racial biases free rein in their conduct.
2. Conviction: This is the period of formal control where Black men experience poor legal representation, harsh sentencing, and a life in prison that is fully monitored, regulated, and any form of disobedience swiftly sanctioned.
3. Invisible punishment: These are the unique set of criminal sanctions imposed on individuals after they are released from prison that operate outside the public view and outside the traditional sentencing framework. This is legal discrimination they face for the rest of their lives — denied housing, employment, education, and public benefits. These obstacles can lead to a return to prison.

Parallels Between the Jim Crow Era and Today

1. Historic parallels: Jim Crow and mass incarceration today began from white elite resentment and the economic frustration of the white working class. Both were born from racial opportunists who, instead of offering economic reforms to address economic anxieties, instead proposed a crackdown on the racially defined “others.”
2. Legalized discriimination: Many forms of Jim Crow-style segregation still impact large segments of the Black population today — provided they are first labeled felons.
3. Political disenfranchisement: During Jim Crow, this came in the form of poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and felon disenfranchisement. Today, felon disenfranchisement still exists, or they need to pay fines before they can vote again (the new poll tax).
4. Exclusion from juries: Many Black people faced all white juries in the Jim Crow era. Today, despite some legal protections, Black jurors can still be removed and felons are excluded automatically from jury service.
5. Closing the courthouse doors: The Supreme Court today also has closed the door to claims of racial bias from stops and searches to plea bargaining and sentencing.
6. Racial segregation: Mass incarceration functions similarly to residential segregation during Jim Crow by separating prisoners (the majority of whom are black and brown) from mainstream society. Prisons are often in remote areas, creating an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. Furthermore, conditions within the prisons are similar to shuttering people into ghettos and released black prisoners usually return to ghettos in society.
7. Symbolic production of race: The most important parallel is that both the old Jim Crow and the new Jim Crow have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. During Jim Crow, to be Black meant to be a second class citizen. Today, mass incarceration defines Blackness, especially in the ways that it defines Black men as criminals.

Limits to the Jim Crow Analogy

1. Absence of racial hostility: Overt racial hostility is absent from politicians who support harsh drug laws and the officers who enforce them.
2. White victims of the racial caste system: Mass incarceration directly harms far more whites than Jim Crow did.
3. Black support for “get tough” policies: Many African Americans seem to support the current system of control, while most believe the same could not be said of Jim Crow.

Can you see how the bars of the birdcage interlock in society/community you are familiar with?